The Runaway
by UESider84
Summary: Modern AU: Arya doesn't want be a lady any longer. Gendry is tired of the same old daily grind. What happens when two utterly different worlds collide? Arya/Gendry with some Jon/Ygritte, Robb/Talisa, and San/San.
1. Chapter 1

With stinging tears in her eyes, Arya made her way to her closet and pulled out her camping gear. She shoved as many pairs of pants, socks, underwear, and panties in the large navy backpack together with an inflatable sleeping pad and the bright orange sleeping bag that was rated for Arctic temperatures. She raided the refrigerator and pulled one of her mother's meat pies that she had made especially for her. She put it inside a small plastic container, took some plastic cutlery from a drawer, filled up one of her water bottles, and then went to her bedroom again where she put everything into the bag.

Being the good girl that she was, she made her bed as well as she could. She fluffed the pillows and pulled the comforter over them. She arranged the shoes that she couldn't take into the color coded order her mother liked and re-arranged the books that were scattered all over the floor onto the bookshelves above her bed. She put the large stuffed bear she had thrown at Sansa into its usual corner.

That was it. She threw on a down vest over her sweater and she placed the heavy pack on top of her shoulders. She made her way down the corridor, petted Lady on the forehead, and then closed the door behind her. She looked at her watch. She had more than enough time.

As she waited for the elevator, she tapped boot against the floor. She was tunelessly whistling an old drinking song her father sometimes sang when the door opened before her. She kept whistling until she walked out of the front door. "Where are you going, Miss Arya?" the doorman called after her.

Arya didn't bother dignifying his greeting with a reply. She merely smiled and waved goodbye.

As she headed down the busy New York street towards the subway, Arya knew that running away was the best decision she had ever made. Earlier that morning there had been a massive row over Syrio, her fencing teacher. Sansa and Catelyn thought it was pointless and a drain on the family budget. Arya thought otherwise. There was a great deal of shouting and slamming of doors on all ends. Not only that, but Catelyn had once again decided to guilt trip Arya the only way she knew. "If only you were more like your sister," the auburn haired woman had sighed.

She took the stairs into the cavernous subway and swiped her Metro card. The train heading towards Grand Central Station was empty at her Upper East Side stop, but it gradually began to fill up with stranger as it moved towards downtown. Arya lost herself in the crowd as she hid her bulky bag underneath her seat. She was no longer Arya Stark, daughter of one of the richest families, but someone else entirely.

At Grand Central Station, Arya got out quickly and made her way to the nearest ticket booth. "One ticket to Westbury, Connecticut," she told the dark-haired woman on the other side of the glass.

"Why are you going?" the woman asked eyeing Arya's backpack. "Camping season is over."

"I'm visiting my brother," Arya replied.

"I see."

At the news kiosk, Arya bought a copy of _The New York Times_ and made her way to the platform.

She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Jon's number.

It rang four times before a woman picked up. "Jon Snow is not available now," the woman recited automatically, "but if you would kindly leave a message after the tone."

"Yygritte. It's me."

"Arya?" Ygritte's voice rose in surprise.

"Yeah."

"Do you want to talk to Jon?"

"Yeah."

Arya heard Ygritte call Jon's name numerous times over what sounded like Motley Crue's _Kickstart My Heart_.

"Yeah," Jon was on the line five minutes later.

"I'm coming up," Arya began with so much as a greeting.

"Coming up?"

"I'm running away from home."

"What?"

"I can't take it anymore, Jon. I'm done with them. With all of them."

"Mother will skin you and me alive if she finds out that you left."

"That's her loss, Jon," Arya explained. "I'm not going to live on the Upper East Side anymore. I already packed everything. I'm at Grand Central Station right now."

"You can't come up here. There's no room."

"I'll sleep on the floor."

"And how are you going to support yourself? You've never worked a day in your life."

"I'll find a way."

"And what about school?"

"I'll go to Westbury Community College with you and Ygritte."

"Fine," Jon sighed. "Call me when the train pulls into the station."

Arya hung up the phone, turned it off, and shoved it into her pants' back pocket.

The train for Connecticut was pulling in. A group of passengers was making their way towards the doors while Arya waited to go in last.

"First or second class?" the conductor asked as he tore her ticket.

"First," Arya replied.

"To the right."

She walked down the narrow corridor of the train station passing businessmen who were falling asleep, women watching movies on their laptops, and children squirming in their parents' arms. Trying as hard as she could not to hit anyone with her bag, she made it to the first class compartment where she seated herself and slid the bulky backpack underneath the seat in front of her.

She took out her ipod and slipped the ear phones into her ears. She turned on "The Friday Night Lights" soundtrack and closed her eyes. She would be in Westbury in two hours, she thought, unless Catelyn went to the Mayor's Office sick with worry and demanded that every train heading out of Manhattan be stopped.

**XOXO**

She watched as the cement and steel jungle of New York gradually gave way to suburban houses and beautiful maple trees that were putting on their robes of red and gold. Growing up in the city, she had never really had an opportunity to see the world beyond except for the camping trips that she took with her father in the Adirondacks.

If Arya despised her mother and Sansa, she loved her father. Ned Stark, the CEO of Synergy Industries, was a tall and handsome man who was known for his plain speech and honorable behavior. While numerous other men tried to steal each other's fortunes and burned each other's buildings to the ground, Ned Stark dealt with everything in the calmest manner possible. When he had to fire someone, he always did it as the employee left for the day rather than giving him or her the news over lunch or just having the secretary leave a pink slip in their mailbox. When he went to board meetings, he always stuck to his agenda. Even when other members of the board tried to show him the way they thought the company should be run by interrupting meetings, Ned would always send them a withering glare to shut them up and then explain to them why their logic was flawed.

In Arya's eyes, her father was an admirable man and her best friend. From the moment she had learned to walk, she had always been at his side. Before Catelyn had sent her to St. Cecilia's, Ned took her to his business meetings and his various office gatherings to show her off. He had hired Syrio to teach her how to fence and he had always encouraged his younger daughter to do things her way.

He was in Shanghai as Arya's train was moving closer and closer to its destination. If he had been in Los Angeles or Minneapolis, she would have asked his advice. She couldn't do that now.

She dug into her pants' pocket and brought out her phone. There were four missed calls from Sansa and a text message from Catelyn: "Stop this nonsense now, young lady."

"I'm not coming back," Arya texted back and put the phone away.

She closed her eyes and tried to take a nap, but the conductor's voice announced that the next station was Westbury.

Arya quickly pulled out her gear and threw the pack on her back as soon as the train came stopped.

She walked down the three steps to the platform.

Her brother, Jon, walked up to her and gave her a quick hug before marching her to the car.

"You pack well," he said as they walked through an empty parking lot.

"And you've gotten fat," Arya teased.

"Ygritte does feed me well," he licked his lips.

"Must be all of those TV dinners."

"That's what Talisa cooks for Robb," Jon winked slyly as he opened the trunk of his Honda hatch back. "Ygritte knows how to cook things."

"What kind of things does she cook for you?" Arya asked once they were seated in the car.

"Anything you can imagine. Except for grilled cheese sandwiches. I can cook those on my own."

"Westbury looks nice," Arya observed as she looked at the Victorian houses and maple trees. "Mother always said that it was like one of the seven circles of hell."

"Speaking of Mother, have you talked to her yet?"

"She texted me while I was on the train."

"And?"

"I told her I wasn't coming back."

Jon pulled the car over to the nearest curb and heaved out a long sigh.

"Oh come on, Jon," Arya scolded him. "This has been coming for years now."

"You can't just run away," Jon's voice had become rather strict.

"You ran away."

"I did not run away, Arya. Mother sent me to boarding school out here and I liked it. You stalked out of the house one nice morning. There's a difference."

"I don't understand you, Jon. You told me that I could come up here. You said that you would have a place ready for me."

"Right," Jon nodded.

"And you didn't turn me away when I called from the station."

"No."

"So, why are turning into a girl right now?"

"I'm not turning into a girl."

"When you start sounding like Mother and Sansa, you most certainly are."

"You're worse than Ygritte," Jon shook his head.

They sat there for a moment on the empty street next to a white-washed house wondering what their next move would be. Arya kept staring at her reflection in the windshield. Her jaw was clenched, her brown eyes were spitting fire. There was no way she would go back to the Upper East Side.

"Look," Arya sighed. "Dad comes home tomorrow. I'll call him and we'll get this all straightened out."

"And what about Mother?" Jon asked nervously.

"She'll go along with it. He'll explain it to her. You'll see."

"And if she calls?"

"Have Ygritte answer the phone. Come on, Jon. Let's get a move on."

**XOXO**

Jon Snow's house in Westbury was located near downtown. From the peeling white-wash and the exposed bricks in the walls, it was clear that the place had seen much better days. There was a beaten up blue Honda Civic with numerous dents parked in the car port and a cat was marching up and down the driveway when John pulled in.

"This is where I live," Jon explained. "Come on."

As soon as Jon knocked on the door, Arya could understand why she had never been allowed to visit him after he graduated high school. The front foyer was a mess. There were amplifiers and electric guitars everywhere. Along the main staircase, the wallpaper had been torn down to make room for portrayals of wizards in starry gowns carrying rosewood wands. All of the furniture in the living room was second hand or worse. Some of the books in the mahogany book case were covered in dust and mildew. If Ygritte ever cleaned the hard wood floor, it was probably with a Swiffer duster cloth and for five minutes of her Sunday at that.

Jon left Arya's bag in the foyer and went upstairs to dress while Arya tried to make herself comfortable on one of the big leather couches. As soon as she sat down, a whoopee cushion sounded underneath her.

"Welcome," a rather rotund and auburn-haired young man said as he sat down next to her and opened up a beer. "You must be Arya."

"I am," Arya replied rather condescendingly as she watched the beer drip down the young man's beard and onto his shirt. "And you are?"

"Sam," the young man nodded. "Hasn't he ever told you about me? Jon and I were fraternity brothers together."

"Oh how can I forget?" Arya rolled her eyes. "You were the pledge who wept while he was being paddled."

"It wasn't my fault that the paddle was hard," Sam wiped the beer off with his sleeve. "You can ask Jon."

"Ask me what?" Jon said as he settled down on the other side of Arya.

"About how hard the paddle was at the initiation."

"Oh God," Jon winced. "Did you really have to go there, Sam? She's my sister."

"So? " Sam belched loudly. "I never had any sisters. I can tell her anything, can't I?"

"Don't bother with that, Tarly," a red-haired young woman wearing ripped jeans and a white T-shirt said as she settled herself down in one of the armchairs around the television. "Arya doesn't want to hear about your man breasts."

"I do not have man breasts, Ygritte," Sam protested. "I don't, Arya. I swear."

"Oh really?" Ygritte winked in his direction. "What's that story I heard about you going down to Bear Island two nights ago and mixing cake batter with them?"

"That's not true," Sam protested.

"It's on Youtube," Jon laughed.

"It is not," Sam's face turned tomato red. "I swear, Arya. It's not."

"It already has one million hits," Ygritte continued the ribbing. "Come on, Arya. I'll show you. It makes fascinating viewing."

"No," Sam protested loudly. "We are not watching that."

"Oh yes, we are," Ygritte said as she turned on the flat screen and logged on to Youtube.

"I'll be in my room," Sam rose indignantly. "You can all entertain yourselves at my expense."

Arya thought that the joke was on her, but it wasn't. There was a video of Sam Tarly standing half naked in front of a bar. A woman, one assumed it was the proprietress, brought in a large tub of cake batter. And, sure enough, Sam mixed it with his breasts and did a good job of it too.

She laughed so much she cried.

"You like it?" Ygritte turned and look at the brunette. "Do you want to see him doing magic tricks?"

"I'd rather not," Arya giggled.

"He always said he wanted to be a wizard," Jon added.

"I heard that!" Sam yelled from the upstairs.

"What's his problem?" Arya asked Ygritte later on as the two of them were setting the table for dinner.

"Sam is just an odd one," Ygritte shrugged. "He's not like your brother at all. He doesn't know anything. At all.

"What do you mean?"

"He's never been with a girl," Ygritte whispered back as her green eyes began twinkling.

"Really?"

"Yeah," the red-head nodded. "He's twenty-five years old and he's still a virgin."

"And what about that whole wizard thing?"

"He's on this website called Wizarding dot net," Jon explained as he brought out the pot roast from the oven. "His screen name is Merlin. Oh and he also has Harry Potter sheets."

"Harry Potter sheets?" That was too much for Arya. She couldn't stop herself giggling now. "Are you serious?"

"Yes," Ygritte and Jon replied in chorus.

"That's unbelievable," Arya giggled. "I can't wait to get the pictures on Facebook."

"You don't have to," Ygritte said as she brought out the sliced white bread from the kitchen. "I already did."

The three of them ate dinner and watched a Yankees game together. Sam came down from time to time to sulk on the couch. Jon's phone rang several times and an irate Catelyn was always on the other line. The first four times he handed it to Ygritte, but he couldn't do that anymore by the fifth call. He moved into the kitchen and spoke with her for half an hour in his rather, shy retiring way. When he returned to the living room, he took a long look at Arya and said, "Mother says you can stay here. She'll talk to Dad tomorrow."

* * *

_A/N: Comments? Complaints? Should I continue?_


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Thank you for the alerts, reviews, and favorites. Here's the next chapter. I hope you enjoy it!_

* * *

Ned Stark had barely walked out of customs when his cell phone began to ring. Sansa was first, but he couldn't hear her. Although he hated being rude to his daughter, he hung up on her. Catelyn called as he was standing next to the baggage claim. By the tone in her voice, he could tell that she wasn't please. "How are things, Cat?" he jested to lighten the mood. "Are the kids staying out of trouble?"

"Three of them are," Catelyn's tone had become steely. "Arya ran away."

"Ran away?" Ned echoed. "What do you mean she ran away?"

"She packed her things into that giant rucksack of hers and took the train to Westbury."

"All right, Cat," Ned said as he picked up his suitcase and headed towards the limousine. "I'm getting another phone call on another line. We'll talk when I get back."

Ned quickly hung up on Catelyn and switched lines as he sat down in the limousine. The line was already empty. Whoever had called him had made the decision to hang up because it wasn't important.

Slowly, but surely the limousine inched its way from JFK towards Manhattan itself. As the skyscrapers appeared against the navy blue night sky, Ned imagined a woman's face staring back at him through the glass. They shared the same dark features of the Starks, but hers were much more pronounced than his were. Her dark eyes could peer into a man's soul and see him for what he was. Whenever she opened her mouth to speak, everyone at home was always afraid that she would insult the first person upon whom she set her eyes.

He knew that woman better than his own self, Ned thought. She was his older sister. They had spent the first couple of years of their lives together until Ned and his brothers were sent to boarding school. After that, he only saw her during the holidays when the entire family would sit in the living near the Yule log singing Christmas carols and at Easter. That was when all of them lived in Westbury together. One big happy family.

That was long gone. Ned thought wistfully. If Lyanna hadn't gone after Rhaegar Targaryen, their lives would have been entirely different. Ned's older brother, Brandon, would have inherited the family conglomerate and moved to New York City instead of being tortured to death by Aerys Targaryen's goons. He would married Catelyn Tully as well and, perhaps, he would now be saddled with raising those children.

Life, however, does not wait for any man. After Brandon murdered, Westbury had been turned into a war zone. Every day, there would be another news broadcast about a wave of killings there. The Baratheons against the Targaryens, the Greyjoys against the Baratheons. On and on the cycle of vengeance seemed to run until the streets of the city had been turned into rivers of blood until the peace was achieved when the National Guard was marching through the streets.

Lyanna had cost the lives of hundred. If Arya made the same mistakes that his sister had and fell in love with the wrong man, would history repeat itself?

Ned doubted it. Even if there was bad blood in Westbury, most of the main players had either died or moved away. Some of the families had gone extinct, others had moved away to safer parts of the country. One or two people had even enrolled themselves in The Witness Protection Program. As far as he was concerned, Westbury had changed for the better.

That was not Catelyn's opinion, of course. She had gone to Westbury and had seen how little the city had changed when Jon and Sam had moved into their new house. "You might think it, Ned," she had told him that night as the two of them lay in bed, "but the Martells still have Sunspear Imports, the Greyjoys are the shipping men, and the Freys are the lawyers."

"At least you don't have to worry about the Mormonts," Ned jested. "I'm pretty sure they still have their bar."

When the car stopped in the garage of his apartment building, Ned took his suitcase and briefcase himself. His heavy steps echoed on the cement staircase. Through the thick walls, he could hear a hard rain pattering against them.

He reached his penthouse in twenty minutes, unlocked the door quickly, and found Catelyn ensconced on the couch reading a newspaper.

"Where are the children?" Ned asked.

"Sansa went out with a friend and the boys are asleep," Catelyn informed him drily.

"Any news from Arya?"

"She's not coming back," she stated flatly, "but I'll make her come back."

"Cat."

"She's seventeen years old," the blue-eyed woman spat. "Seventeen!"

"She's a woman," Ned assured her. "You don't need to coddle her until she's thirty."

"I do not coddle my children," Catelyn protested.

"What about Sansa?"

"What about her?"

"You sent her to Barnard so that she would be close to us. You sent both Jon and Robb to Yale…"

"That's not fair," Catelyn snapped. "That's not coddling."

"Yes, it is and you need to allow them to flex their wings every once in a while and fly."

"That's what all of you men say. You believe that children should be allowed freedom, but hasn't it ever entered your heads that freedom isn't free? I mean what's going to happen if one of those idiots up there decides to kidnap Arya or, God forbid, kill her? Or what if she falls in love with someone and we have that whole situation start up again?"

"That won't happen, Cat."

"How do you know?" Catelyn rolled her eyes. "Memories are long in Westbury, Ned. I really hope you haven't forgotten that."

"Memories may be long, but people change. Time heals wounds."

"Not all of them."

"No," Ned nodded, "but she has Jon and she is safe.

**XOXO**

Arya felt that her victory was too easy when Ned called her the following morning and informed her of their decision. There had to be a catch somewhere. Her mother was awfully good at those. When Arya had been very small, Catelyn would always add something after her instruction. Thinly veiled threats of violence worked best, Arya thought, but there were also promises of sweet meats and pies if she behaved. She asked her father about this, but Ned reassured her that there were no strings. "You can do whatever you want up there and we will try to support you," he explained, "as long as you're going to school somewhere."

"Can I dual enroll at the community college?" Arya asked excitedly.

"You can," Ned had replied, "but you have to be registered with the school district as well."

Registering with the local schools was easier for Arya than she had anticipated. The school district office was located in what seemed to be an abandoned warehouse downtown. The kindly grey-haired registrar asked her for some documents that Arya had had taken with her just in case as well as transcripts from her. Arya heaved and hawed, but managed to produce the ones from her sophomore year. The grey-haired matron took it and returned the rest to her.

She had the rest of the day off after this formality. As quickly as her feet took her, she began walking in various directions. In the beginning, she kept to the street near the school district office. There were plenty of abandoned, rusted out buildings here. There was trash literally everywhere. The sidewalk was pockmarked with hole where some of the tiles and had fallen in. Every once in a while, she heard a dog barking in her direction or watched as an unsupervised toddler crosses and re-crossed the street to retrieve its toys. It reminded her of certain sections of Manhattan: the earthly smells, the ghastly sewers, the potholes. The only difference was that there were houses instead of apartment buildings and small stores where the bodegas might sit.

She moved closer to the center of Westbury. The people were much better dressed here than they were in Flea's Bottom, the neighborhood she had just visited. The girls wore hip clothes and the mothers crossed the street hand in hand with their toddlers. The shops were mostly boutiques that sold antiques, toys, vintage clothes, and old books. Arya sometimes looked through the windows and watched as a fashionably dressed woman sampled some silk fabric with her fingers or as a wizened old man pulled down a series of leather bound volumes from an extremely high shelf.

The center of Westbury was different altogether. Although Arya had noticed this before, the city was located on a high hill. The highest point was topped by a large, neo-classical mansion with Corinthian pillars. It was surrounded by a wrought iron fence with pointed spikes at the end and two larger than life dragon statues guarded the door. The plaque on the gate informed the casual visitors that this was the mayor's mansion and was commonly known as The Red Keep.

In a large circle surrounding The Red Keep on all sides were a series of store fronts that clearly belonged to the various notables. The first building clockwise from the gate was a large marble bank building guarded by two imposing lions, the second was a gigantic nursery holding every imaginable flower, the third was a sports goods store, the fourth an import-export business, and so the store fronts ran in a circle until they ended in a rather small, non-descript building with a ship high above its front gates.

Arya walked among these buildings carefully noting the names of the owners, although they meant absolutely nothing to her.

She felt her stomach grumbling and found herself marching towards Bear Island Bar and Grill. It was the place where Sam's embarrassing video had been taken, but Arya hadn't been able to see anything of the interior because it was so dimly lit.

From the outside, Bear Island looked like any other restaurant. It was housed in a small brick building and had a sign hanging on the outside showing a bear standing on its back paws. The awning over the front door was made of a greenish cloth, but there was really nothing else that made the place particularly memorable

The inside was not as dark as it had been in the video. Light poured in from of the some of the windows and there was some artificial light coming in from the ceiling. In the center of the dining was a giant table made out of oak that could easily seat twenty, the other tables were around it, and the ketchup red booths were smashed against the walls. Everywhere Arya noted the stuffed bear heads that were attached to the walls as well as a giant black bear skin that had been nailed somehow into the ceiling. There were also photographs everywhere – young men and women smiling, someone doing a keg stand, and Sam mixing cake batter half-naked.

"May I help you?" a dark haired, brown eyed young woman asked Arya as she stood before the hostess's desk.

"Yes, I'd like something to eat and I'd like to sit at the bar, please."

"How old are you?" the waitress eyed her suspiciously.

"Twenty-two," Arya pulled slid her ID across the desk.

"All right," t

"May I help you?" a silver haired, violet eyed young woman asked Arya as she stood before the hostess's desk.

"Yes, I'd like something to eat and I'd like to sit at the bar, please."

"How old are you?" the waitress eyed her suspiciously.

"Twenty-two," Arya pulled slid her fake ID across the desk.

"All right," the young man made a slight jerk toward the bar.

The bar was located to the far right of the desk where Arya was standing. A group of men with long pony tails that reached to the smalls of their backs occupied one end, while the other end was completely empty.

She had only sat down for a couple of seconds when she became aware of the bartender's withering glare.

"How old are you?" he asked her straight out.

"Twenty-two," Arya repeated.

"Bullshit."

"Here's my ID," she fished out the small piece of plastic and laid it on the shiny oaken surface.

The man's slightly bulgy blue eyes surveyed it carefully and handed it back to her.

"Hey Gendry!" one of the pony-tailed men shouted. "How much do you want to bet she's sixteen?"

"Shove off, Rakharo!" the bartender shouted back as he gave Arya a menu. "Leave the girl alone."

"Why should I?" Rakharo asked. "Us Dothraki men like our girls young."

"You only like them young because you can screw them up the ass."

A chorus of oohs emerged from the pony-tailed men.

"Do you really want to go there, Gendry?" Rakharo asked as he fished for something in his pockets. "Do you want to have your balls handed to you on a platter?"

"You know what?" the man they called Gendry pulled out a knife from the back pockets of his jeans. "If you want to fight me here and get thrown out, let's do this. Right here. Right now."

Someone's fist pounded the bars so that it trembled underneath Arya's arms. The tallest of the pony-tailed men glared at Rakharo, lifted him up by his jacket, and then threw him with one arm into the nearest booth. He made a threatening gesture with one of his hands and looked at Gendry. "I'm sorry," he said with a heavy Eastern European accent. "It won't happen again."

"Who was that?" Arya once the pony-tailed men were once again staring into their drinks.

"What's your age?" Gendry shot back as he wiped down the bar with a warm towel.

"Twenty-two."

"That's K.D."

"Kay who?" Arya raised her eyebrows.

"Khal Drogo," Gendry whispered back almost reverentially. "He's one of our most valued customers."

"And those men?"

"They're his blood riders."

"His what?"

"Blood riders," Gendry whispered again so that he pony-tailed men wouldn't hear him. "They're his motorcycle gang."

It was only now that Arya realized that those men were wearing leather jackets and pants. Some of them had tattoos that began in their hands of horse's hooves, others had horses emblazoned on their jackets. One of them even had a horse face tattooed on the back of his head. They also had blue stripes on the arms of their jackets and their eyes wore what looked to be black grease.

Arya turned her gaze away from them and looked down at the menu. She ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and a beer. It wasn't long before Gendry was glaring at her again.

"You're not from around here," he said as he looked at down vest, navy blue shirt, and brand new Lee jeans. "Where are you from?"

"New York City."

"New York City," Gendry bit down on his lip. "Nice place. Been there once or twice when I wasn't stuck in this shithole."

"I hate it there. I hated it so much that I came up here."

"I hate it here," Gendry admitted.

"Why?" Arya asked screwed up her face. "It's lovely here."

"Westbury isn't lovely," Gendry spat. "It's hell on earth."

"Doesn't look like it."

"Maybe to you it doesn't because you're not from around here, but to me it is."

The statement echoed in Arya's head as she chewed her sandwich and downed her glass of beer. Hell on earth. Was that even possible? Everything she had seen led her to the exact opposite conclusion. Aside from Jon's messy house, which was probably his own fault anyway, and the burned out Flea Bottom, there was nothing hellish about the place it all. It was just like every other small city she had ever heard her parents talk about, but there had been something in Gendry's tone which suggested otherwise.

She wanted to ask him more questions, but the flow of happy hour customers interrupted their conversation. She paid him with cash and gave him an extra large tip before heading out the door.

She was out on the main street again in the center of town. People were moving in different directions. Some heading towards their homes in the outlying districts, others jostling each other as they were getting on the small regional buses, still others were marching towards one of the shops to make some last minute purchases.

Arya circled them several times before she stopped in front of Sunspear Imports. From the outside, the building seemed to be an exact replica of the Taj Mahal. There was an onion dome on the roof and the walls were built of white marble. The interior, as seen through the windows, looked like a final club in Boston. Every inch of the walls was inlaid with various dark woods and the tables were made out of mahogany.

As she entered, Arya immediately noticed the lemony scent that entered her nostrils. She looked up to see two lemon trees on the second floor surrounded by the finest and brightest Oriental rugs money could buy. On the main floor, there were glass hookahs carefully placed against each of the walls and all kinds of sweets were laid out on the tables. There was one entirely devoted to six different varieties of dates, another had silver bowls containing twenty different sorts of Turkish delight.

Arya's mouth watered as she brought her nose to each of these scents, but she always prevented herself from touching anything. She had seen the sign on front door with the clip art image of a severed hand. The owners clearly took shoplifting seriously.

After forty-five minutes of admiring the exquisite hand-blown hookahs, she made it to the second floor where she was able to admire the rugs. Many of them were Persian, she thought, or imported from some other part of the Middle East. At St. Cecilia's, one of her classmates' fathers was an antique dealer who specialized in rugs and had once given a presentation to Arya's seventh grade class. As she looked at the intricately woven flowers and animals, she couldn't help remembering his lectures.

As she was looking, a woman came up to her and stood by her side. She wore a thick black veil around her head and body, but a red skirt was clearly visible underneath. Her eyes were the color of melted dark chocolate, her skin the color of olive oil. She smelled of oranges and jasmine, but Arya couldn't be sure if the odor was coming from her or the flowers and trees on either end.

"I'm very sorry," Arya said as soon as she finished admiring the last rug. "You probably thought I was a buyer, didn't you?"

"No," the woman shook her head. "You just lingered a little longer than most people and I wanted to see if you needed help."

"Do people like to linger here?" Arya asked.

"Some of them do," the woman shrugged. "Others don't.

"Well, this place is rather lovely," Arya noted. "I've never seen something like this before."

"You mean you've never been to a place like this before," the woman corrected with a friendly.

"Yes," Arya nodded. "That's exactly what I meant."

"Where are you from then?" the woman asked as she bade Arya to sit down on one of the benches near the rugs.

"New York."

"And you don't have import-export businesses in New York?" she teased with a smile.

"We do, but they're nothing like this. They're…"

"Oh I know what they are," she finished the Stark's sentence. "I've been to plenty of them myself. Refrigerators full of moldy cheese, baklava that tastes like cardboard."

"Exactly."

"So what do you do in New York?" the woman asked as she adjusted her veil.

"I just moved here."

"Oh," the woman revealed two rows of beautifully even teeth. "That's wonderful! I think you'll like it here."

"Gendry over at Bear Island told me this place was hell on earth."

"Don't listen to Gendry Waters," the girl waved her suggestion away. "I like to think of Westbury as paradise."

"One man's hell is another man's heaven?"

"More or less," the woman shrugged. "It all depends on how you look at it."

"That's a very nice philosophy."

"Well," the woman chuckled, "most things are relative after all."

**XOXO**

Arya was lying on the floor of the living room in her sleeping bag trying to fall asleep. As she listened to Jon's snoring and Ygritte's whistling, she couldn't stop herself from staring at the ceiling. Some people could sleep so peacefully, she thought, but what if Westbury was indeed hell on earth. Wasn't that possible? Gendry had seemed awfully sincere about it, but Arianne Martell had told her that it was heaven. Was that possible too? Could two places be both heaven and hell?

She knew that it was indeed possible. In New York, there were neighborhoods that could not be entered unless one took special precautions. Westbury was so compact, however, that it seemed almost impossible. Aside from Flea Bottom, the other neighborhoods seemed reasonably peaceful. The people on the streets seemed very happy and were courteous to her, but the thought kept gnawing at her. What if she was wrong? What if Westbury, Connecticut, was worse than New York?


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, alerted, and favorited this story. A special thanks to bearinthenorth and theironkraken on tumblr, who provided me with some ideas that I made use of in this chapter and to MagicMyth83 for her encouragement. Please enjoy this chapter and let me know what you thought of it. _

* * *

Sansa kept drumming her fingers on the black table before her. With her left hand, she was simulating a series of runs that ran up and down her imaginary keyboard. Her right hand seemed to stay in one place, but that was only because she was constantly changing the fingering for the octaves that carried the melody. First and fifth finger, then first and fourth, then first and fifth again.

If she was sitting in front of a piano, she would be going through the final pages of Franz Liszt's Sixth Hungarian Rhapsody ad nauseam. It was the piece that was supposed to bring down the house at her Carnegie Hall debut. Madam Mordane had told her so when she had asked her to go to a sheet music store and get herself a Peters edition of the score.

Sansa enjoyed the piece in the beginning. It was perfect for her rather large hands and her long tapering fingers. The entire piece was in the form of a Hungarian dance called the czardas. Divided into two relatively equal sections, there was a slow introduction called the lassu or lassan and a second half called the friss, which went faster and faster until it turned into the repeated octaves that she was drumming so earnestly against the table's surface.

As the months drew on, however, Sansa simply couldn't understand Madam Mordane's logic. If she had to bring down the house, couldn't she play something that was a little bit more modern? What about that Seventh Piano Sonata by Prokofiev that Madam was constantly praising to the skies or one of Sansa's favorite pieces by Philip Glass? Mad Rush, perhaps, or a series of etudes? She had told Madam Mordane these things at one of her weekly lessons, but the rotund old woman had shaken her head. "You are playing a traditional recital, Sansa," she had admonished her, "You must finish with a Liszt rhapsody."

The idea of a traditional recital program didn't make any sense to Sansa. Every pianist created their own programs. Some of them played all twenty four Chopin Etudes in two hours and threw in the three posthumous ones as an encore. There were those who performed the complete works of Ravel in one recital. Of course, there were those whose programs consisted entirely of short pieces like Godowsky's transcriptions of Bach and Chopin or little gems like Brahms's intermezzi. Still, there were even those who threw all caution to the wind and played longer works. Each of them knew what he or she was doing and what the public wanted, why did Madam Mordane always insist on a traditional format?

It wasn't logical to Sansa. Over the last twenty years, she had learned how to play almost everything from Albeniz to Schnittke and beyond. Her favorite composers were Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Bach, and Scarlatti. She had chosen a Schubert sonata for her debut, but Madam Mordane threw it out as too long. She proposed two Shostakovich preludes and fugues, but Madam declared that the audience would want something more romantic. On and on, they had gone back and forth until they had created the program that would be concluded with this Liszt.

After Sansa had gone through the score five times, she shut the book. She looked up from the table and gazed out the window of the Starbucks on Broadway and 110th Street. Up and down the street, every vehicle known to man was moving at a frenetic pace. Town cars, limousines, buses, bicycles, motorcycles, and everything in between seemed to be in motion. Everyone, Sansa thought, except for her.

Ever since she had started at Barnard, she had had a secret longing to get out of the penthouse on Park and 93rd. She didn't hate her childhood home, but she didn't love it either. Rickon and Bran were an annoyance with their constant questions. Until her recent decision to take life into her own hands, Arya had been a constant nuisance with her talk about that filthy fencing master of hers who constantly talked to her about the god of death and what people said to him. Sansa didn't care about the god of death or Arya's stupid fencing teacher. Her parents were another story entirely.

All of her life, it seemed to her, she was longing to escape from that restricted world. In New York, a person could be anybody her or she wanted to be. Immigrants had come to this place with very little money and had turned themselves into tycoons. Poor boys and girls from the Lower East Side had become great artists, writers, film directors, composers. Why couldn't she be like them? Why couldn't she be free to do whatever she pleased?

She realized, however, that she was not like Jon or Arya. Running away or flunking out of school because of too much drinking were not the way that she did things. She might daydream of running away to some exotic place, but she knew that as a Stark and a female member of the family she was expected to do well in school, marry, and then do her share to ensure that the family business was successful. That was what her future was and that was why after gazing out at the street for a long moment, she opened up the score again to those octaves and began drumming her hands against the table.

She wasn't able to practice for long because she became aware of someone staring at her. She looked up from her place at the table and noticed that a young man had taken the empty seat directly across from her. He was small for his age, she thought, with a wizened little face. His blonde hair was in a crew cut and his nose seemed rather pointed, but it was his eyes that pulled her in. Those dark blue eyes were something that she had never seen before.

"Can you stop making that annoying noise?" The young man's voice was nasal and tinged with a strong Yankee accent.

"I'm sorry," Sansa looked down at her hands. "I was practicing for a concert."

"A concert," the young man smiled. "Are you like that singer Lady Gaga?"

"No," she nodded her head. "I'm not like her at all, but I do like to sing."

"Can you sing something for me?" His voice made the question sound like a command.

"I'm sorry, but it's not polite to sing in public."

"Then maybe you could hum whatever it was that you were drumming."

Sansa started the melody, but the boy instantly raised his hands to stop her.

"Dog," he said turning to a slightly older dark haired man, who was sitting next to him. "What did you think of that?"

"Good," the dark-haired man and returned to the newspaper that he had been reading.

Sansa wanted to leave that very instant, but there was a force that was commanding her to stay. She could see the blonde young man running his eyes up and down her body. He started with her light blue eyes, moved down her neck to her breasts, and then rested his eyes against the table. He repeated this several times as if he were a Cossack examining a new horse.

"You're very pretty," the young man smiled. "Isn't she pretty, Dog?"

"Yes," his companion replied slightly annoyed.

Heat rose to Sansa's cheeks. She looked down at her hands in embarrassment.

"Has no one called you pretty?" the boy asked.

Sansa shook her head no.

"I think you're pretty," he said through his teeth. "You're more than pretty. You're so regal you could be a queen."

Sansa's blush deepened and she placed a hand against her mouth so that he wouldn't see the growing grin that was enveloping her face.

"Have you ever had a boyfriend?" the young man asked her as he looked earnestly into her eyes and demanded that she drink of his own.

"No," Sansa shook her head.

"Well," he crossed his arms, "I guess this means that I can ask you on a date. Would you like to go on a date with me?"

"Yes," Sansa was grinning from ear to ear. She couldn't suppress her emotions any longer.

"Well, then," the young man rose together with his companion and bowed in her direction. "How about I buy you a cup of tea now and we go out to that quaint Greek little place across the street later?"

"I would love it," Sansa replied. "Will your companion be joining us?"

"Dog?"

"Yes."

"No," Joffrey shook his head and turned towards his companion. "You have the rest of the afternoon off, Sandor. You can go home."

Sansa was in a daze for the next four hours. The young man, whose name was Joffrey, bragged incessantly. His father was one of the richest men in New York, he said, and his grandfather had so much money that the tabloids claimed he could shit gold coins while reading a newspaper. He was Phi Beta Kappa at Columbia, he claimed, and was studying political science. His ultimate ambition in life was to become a lawyer.

He spoke like that entire afternoon rarely pausing to ask Sansa what she liked and what she didn't like. Every time she started to say something, he always raised his hand and flicked his wrist. It wasn't important.

In other circumstances, she would have found him to be a snobbish prick who was full of himself. However, she couldn't look away from those eyes. Even while she was eating or looking out a window at the rush hour traffic, she always felt them against her skin begging her to look back at him, to drink them in, to look into the very depths of Joffrey's being.

She gazed into those eyes for hours and walked out of Zorba's Café feeling like she was walking on clouds. Every time she thought about his name, she smiled to herself and felt her heart beat a little faster. While her father's town car moved towards her apartment, all she could think about was Joffrey. She was lost in him and she hoped that he was lost in her. Isn't that how love worked? She asked herself. Isn't that what true love was? That point when a woman could think of her beloved and smile or laugh?

"Are you drunk?" Jeyne Pool asked her when she called her later that evening in her dorm at Princeton.

"No, Jeyne. I'm not. I swear."

"Then why are you acting like you are?"

"What on earth do you mean?" Sansa's voice rose an octave in outrage.

"You're stammering. You can't even give me a complete sentence."

"I am giving you complete sentences, Jeyne. See?"

"Okay, I'll grant you that," she could see her dark-haired girlfriend rolling her eyes. "Spill."

"I met a boy at the Starbucks on Broadway and 110th."

"That part I heard," Jeyne was becoming annoyed.

"His name is Joffrey Baratheon. He's rather full of himself, but I like him."

"Full of himself, but you like him?"

"I guess," Sansa shrugged.

"Is he a Dartmouth man? Those bastards can't stop talking about themselves."

"He actually goes to Columbia."

"Columbia?"

"Yes. He's studying political science. He wants to be a lawyer."

"Ah," she could imagine Jeyne putting her index finger to her lip. "That makes more sense. What did you say his last name was?"

"Baratheon," Sansa repeated

"Isn't his father a business partner with your father?"

"I guess," Sansa shrugged.

"You guess?"

"I've never looked into my father's business dealings."

"And isn't his mother _the_ Cersei Lannister? The one they call the Lioness of the Upper East Side?"

"Yes."

"Did he say anything about an uncle named Jaime? The general, I think?"

"Maybe. Why are you asking so many questions, Jeyne?"

"Please don't overreact," Jeyne paused for a long moment, "but if he really does love you, you would be the girlfriend of one of the most famous boys in the city."

Sansa let out a five second shriek and pumped the air with her fist. She was going to be a princess, she thought. She might even become a queen. "This is too good to be true," she whispered as she heard a stern knock at her door. "Oh God, Jeyne, thank you so much for telling me. I have to go."

She hung up the phone and watched as Catelyn walked in dressed in a navy blue nightgown. Concern written all over her face.

"Do you want to tell me what's going on, sweetheart?" she said as she sat down on an edge of the sleigh bed.

"It's nothing, Mum," Sansa wiped off her smile with her hand. "Jeyne and I were just talking about how she was doing at Princeton. Apparently, she's been chosen for…"

"Sansa," Catelyn looked directly into her eyes, "Don't lie to me."

"I met someone today," Sansa let the words tumble out of her mouth as quickly as possible.

"And what kind of person is this someone?"

"A boy."

"A boy," Catelyn let out a low whistle.

"Mum, he's nothing like that I swear. He was a gentleman to me. He took me to this Greek restaurant and we had the most beautiful meal and…"

"He took you to a restaurant?"

"Yes. It was a spur of the moment date."

"Oh I see," Catelyn rolled her eyes. "He's one of those."

"He's not," Sansa protested. "He's not like that at all."

"Then what is he like?"

"He comes from a good family. Dad knows his father. He said that they were friends or something. His uncle is a general. His grandfather…" She paused. She couldn't exactly use the word _defecate_ in front of her mother. "Well, he's one of the richest men in the country."

"And what is this boy's name?"

"Joffrey Baratheon," Sansa breathed.

Something on Catelyn's face rippled, as it were a lake into which someone had thrown a heavy stone. She turned her head away from her daughter and looked in the mirror across from Sansa's bed. The girl could see something rising inside the older woman as her stomach began heaving and her eyes became focused on something in the past.

Sansa had seen that look only once before. At her Uncle Jon Arryn's funeral when her father and Uncle Edmure lowered the shiny black coffin surmounted with a golden cross into the cold ground of a cemetery somewhere in Connecticut. Catelyn was standing next to Aunt Lysa, their bodies draped from head to toe in black, and held her sister's hand. It was then that Sansa had looked upon the blue eyed Tully woman's face and seen an emotion that she had never imagined that she would see – fear.

"I need to talk to your father," Catelyn said as she rose from her sitting position on the side of the bed.

"But Mum," Sansa began to protested, but the words died on her lips as her mother glanced at her with that look of complete and absolute fear.

As she pulled the down covers over her body, Sansa wondered what it was about Joffrey that scared her mother so. Could it be that she sensed Sansa's feelings for him? Was it something about his family? As far as Sansa could recall she hadn't said anything incriminating about him. She had mentioned his family and his name, but that was all. If there was anything else, it was hidden from her and she didn't see it at all.

She turned on her side and looked to the left where there was always an empty. She imagined him lying there next to her, his hand placed against her cheek rubbing it up and down. "My sweet prince," she whispered as she closed her eyes and travelled into the land of dreams, "my sweet Prince Joffrey."

**XOXO**

Arya spent every afternoon at Bear Island. As soon as the bell for dismissal rang at Westbury Senior High school, she ran through the maze of streets towards the center of town. She always sat down at the end of the bar and ordered whatever the special was. While the Dothraki or The Faceless Men jeered at each other and started bar fights, she would sit on that stool and work on the homework that her teachers had assigned. Nobody bothered to ask her questions about who she was or where she had come from. She was a regular and she was treated as such.

If anyone had ever asked Arya why she was a regular at Bear Island, she would have told them that she liked the atmosphere. The truth, however, was always plainly written on her face as soon as she walked through the glass and set her bag down on the wooden floor. She was there to see Gendry.

There are many people who do not know what it feels like to be in love with someone, but Arya knew. It was not the same thing as it was for Sansa. There were no smile at the mere mention of his names or a running list of what they would call their children, but there was something else. A fire that burned her on the inside every time she looked into his dark eyes or contemplated his regal features, which nothing in the world could quench.

Their conversations were shy and tentative. They both seemed to be groping for the right word to say. The way Gendry avoided her eyes told Arya that he had never been around someone like her before and the way she always stuttered when he asked her a question clearly indicated to him that she was always nervous around him.

Their topics were always exactly the same. They always asked each other about how their days had gone. Sometimes, Arya would talk about her professors and the homework that they assigned her. Gendry would talk about the people who had spent the previous night telling him about their cheating husbands or wives, their loneliness, their depression, the infinite sadness that a glass of beer and a friendly ear could always cure.

"I don't know why they always talk to me," Gendry confided in her one afternoon as she was hunched over a physics.

"You're a good listener, Gendry," Arya offered.

"Oh really?" His face was frozen in shock.

"Yes," Arya nodded. "You really are. You listen and you take in whatever people say."

"No, I don't. I just listen to people so that I can get them off my back."

"You mean you don't really care about their problems?"

"I have more than enough problems of my own," he sighed. "Their problems are the least of my worries."

"What kind of problems?" Arya closed the book with a loud bang as she tried to meet his gaze.

"None of your business."

"Maybe I can help you?" Arya offered.

"You can't help me," his voice had become tired and rather angry. "You have no idea what it's like."

"What is it like?"

"Well," he leaned against the bar and threw the wet towel onto a half-filled bottle of vodka. "I've lived my entire life in this fucking town and I hate it here."

"Why?"

"I don't belong here," Gendry spat angrily. "You don't belong here either."

"But I like it here. The people are nice."

"Not everyone is nice, Arya. Wolves can sometimes hide in sheep's clothing."

Later that afternoon, she had found herself sitting on one of the benches at Sunspear eating pomegranates with Arianne. The dark-haired, dark-eyed woman was also a good listener, Arya thought, and a perfect balance to Gendry. Where he was always so pessimistic, she was optimistic and honest. She was like the old sister that Arya had always wanted, but had never found in Sansa. Someone with whom she could sit for hours and talk about everything and nothing at the same time.

It was odd that the two of them had become such friends in a couple of weeks. Arianne was nothing like Arya. Whereas Arya could care less about her appearance and always appeared to be wearing a bright yellow hoodie, ripped jeans, and sneakers, the daughter of Doran was always immaculately dressed. The clothes hidden under the thick veil she always wore were made out of the finest materials and ordered straight from the fashion houses in Italy. Her shoes were Prada and her dresses were Cavalli, but the veil always managed to hide those and to make her mysterious and unattainable.

There were other differences, too. Arya had always thought of herself as a man trapped in a woman's body where Arianne was a woman to a tee. Sometimes, the Stark girl would find her sitting at the cash register engrossed in a book by Sophie Kinsella or some other writer. Her favorite movie was _Shopgirl_. Her favorite painter was Renoir. Her favorite composer – Mozart.

The Stark girl couldn't claim any of these things as her own. She despised Renoir because his paintings were incredibly saccharine. She found chick lit completely and absolutely abhorrent. Her favorite movies starred Bruce Lee or Mel Gibson. Her favorite band was The White Stripes and the books she read always included heroes that were looking for some just cause to avenge.

On that particular afternoon, Arya placed the pomegranate seeds in her mouth and allowed them to burst against her taste buds. Their sour taste was second to none. Every time she felt the juice spray against the roof of her mouth, she winced a little and watched as Arianne gave her a delighted chuckle. "You'll get used to it," she had told her the day after she had wandered into Sunspear. Somehow, Arya still hadn't gotten used to it.

"Do you have a boyfriend, Arianne?" Arya asked as she placed her pomegranate on the porcelain plate between them.

"No. I don't think I ever will know a man until the day of my marriage."

"I'm in love with someone," the Stark girl confided as she looked down at the rosewood floor in embarrassment. "I think I am anyway."

When she looked up after a moment, she was expecting Arianne to laugh at her. Instead, she seemed to detect a note of sympathy in her dark eyes.

"Well?" The woman prodded her gently. "Does he know you exist?"

"Yes," Arya blushed. "He knows, but he doesn't want to let me in."

"What do you mean?"

"He's closed up. I wanted to ask him about his life, but he told me not to trust anybody instead."

"Men can be strange that way," Arianne smiled. "When they have certain feelings, you can see those emotions engraved on their face. Yet when you ask them what is wrong, they always clam up about it and refuse to say another word."

"Then how do you get the words out of them?" Arya leaned her on her arm and looked into the Martell's warm brown eyes.

"I really don't know. Sometimes, they will tell you themselves. When something is bothering my uncle, he always comes out and says it even if it is the most inappropriate thing in the world. I have the same problem with my brothers. They always whatever is on their mind when they come around."

"My brothers are not like that. Robb is a bit impulsive, yes, but Jon doesn't speak much."

"Do you have any other siblings?" Curiosity was sparkling in the woman's eyes now.

"I have two younger brothers and an older sister."

"Do you get along with your siblings?"

"I love my brothers, but I can't stand my sister," Arya admitted rather coldly. "She's so lady-like and prissy that it really annoys me."

"Why?"

"Because my mother always insists that I act like a lady when I don't want to," she spat out angrily.

"Do you like being a tomboy?'

"Sometimes," she shrugged. "Do you like wearing your veil?"

"I have to wear it. I don't have a choice."

"But if you did," Arya insisted. "Would you wear it or not?"

"Why does it matter?" Arianne's voice rose in frustration. "It is what it is."

Arya paused wondering what her next move would be. She could see by the angry look in Arianne's eyes that her veil and her religion was not a matter that was open to discussion. Indeed, it was a closed door that she wasn't allowed to touch. She looked out the window in front of her and at all of those passing people and then she gazed back at the veiled woman as she placed a pomegranate seed in her. All of her anger had disappeared.

"I'm sorry," Arya's voice was contrite. "I honestly didn't mean to offend you."

"You didn't offend me," Arianne shrugged.

"Yes, I did. I saw it in your eyes."

"That's just the Martell temper. All of us have it. Doesn't your family have a particular trait that you're not particularly proud of?"

"My family believe in honor above all things."

"Honor is a good thing, but it can also have terrible consequences."

"What do you mean?"

"Honorable people are not the smartest in the world, Arya. For example, what would you do if someone came up to you and said that they had secret information about somebody else?"

"I would go to that someone else and tell them what I had heard."

"That's an honorable thing to do," Arianne nodded, "but it's not the best choice."

"Then what is the best choice?"

"If you want my honest opinion," she shrugged, "the thing to do is to store that information in your brain and then use it to harm that person."

"Are you talking about gossip?"

"Not just gossip, Arya. Murder, assassination, poisoning. If you know enough about someone and it offends you, you can kill them in cold blood."

The words felt like cold daggers to her. She thought that the older woman was joking, but she knew that wasn't the case. In the vast metropolis of New York and the small town of Westbury, people operated in exactly that way. How many times had she overheard something at St. Cecilia's about Sansa and then told everyone about it at the dinner table? How many times had she watched as her sister's face had turned scarlet with embarrassment and her father had pulled her into another room to lecture her about how gossiping and back biting were the worst crimes that a person could perpetrate on another aside from murder?

She wanted to discuss this very subject, but the pomegranate was finished and the older woman had risen from her place. She was moving down the stairs towards first floor. Arya watched as her graceful figure made its way to the manager's office. Her hips swayed gently from side to side, the muscles on her buttocks rose and fell evenly with the movement of her legs, her blood red veil seemed to billow after her.

Arya thought about how clumsy her own movements were. Everybody had called her a cat because she was sneaky and silent, but she could also be extremely clumsy. She fidgeted a great deal when she was seated at a table taking pieces of bread and make them into little balls of dough. She stammered when she was nervous. When she was around someone like Gendry, she could barely look him in the eye because her heart was pounding in her ears. Catelyn was right about her. She was no lady, but watching Arianne she desperately wanted to become one. If only because she wanted Gendry to open up to her.

"How do you do it?" Arya asked the older woman as she slung her messenger bag over her shoulder and was about to head out the door.

"Do what?" Arianne asked as she closed the register.

"Act like a lady."

"It's very easy," the dark-haired woman smiled. "Do you want me to teach you?"

"Please."


	4. Chapter 4

Arya was seated on a high chair in the middle of a small beauty salon. She watched in the mirror as a woman's greasy hands moved through her jet black. She felt as the woman, Osha, pulled up her hair with a rather brutal grip and snipped off the ends with her scissors. She did this numerous times silently. She was so focused on her craft that she didn't look at Arya at all or ask her questions like the beauticians back home did. The only comment was when she had looked Arya's hair over at the very beginning of the appointment, "You have split ends. You need to take care of that."

Arya kept looking admiring herself in the mirror. Back home, she had never spent a moment in front of the giant looking glass in the bathroom she shared with Sansa nor had she taken advantage of the small square in Jon's bathroom. Now, however, she was finally able to gaze upon her reflection and assess her looks as Arianne had recommended when she had asked her for beauty tips.

She wasn't ugly. That was a relief to her, but she wasn't beautiful either. Not for her the striking Tully eyes of her mother or Sansa's long mane of fiery red hair. Her hair was long, black, and the color of coal. Her eyes were dark brown like her father's, but with little specks of yellow here and there. Her nose was straight and her lips full. The overall shape of her face was very round indeed, but it was the roundness of an egg rather than a golden ring.

When Osha asked her to move her head very slight to the left, Arya was able to see her profile. She was struck dumb.

There was an old story that her father liked to tell about his sister, Lyanna, a woman that had died long before Arya. She was very beautiful, Ned said, and had fallen in love with a man named Rhaegar Targaryen. Rhaegar was married at the time and wasn't able to divorce his wife for a reason that was never made explicit. They ran away and carried on their affair together, but certain persons thought that Lyanna had been kidnapped and they went after her and Rhaegar. She died alone, her father said, on a bloody bed and had asked him to make some kind of promise. When she had asked him about the promise, he told her that it wasn't her place to know.

However, she had always been curious about this Aunt Lyanna whom she had never had the chance. She asked Catelyn about her once as the two of them were sitting on the couch watching an episode of "Friday Night Lights" with Sansa, but her mother had pretended that she hadn't heard the question. When Arya had importuned her once more, Catelyn had looked straight into her eyes and said, "Please, do not speak that name in my house."

Whenever her parents were out of the house, Arya would comb through the family albums in her father's study looking for photographs of Aunt Lyanna. She ploughed through volume after leather bound volume until she found her photographs in a dog-eared envelope. On one side, an unknown hand had scrawled – "Lyanna's Private Photographs."

She spent an entire afternoon during the eighth grade sitting on her parents' bed looking intently at the contents. It was clear from the photographs that Lyanna indeed was a beautiful woman. There were several snapshots of her sitting in a car next to a man with silver hair and violet eyes. There was another taken at a dressage event where she wore a crown of bluish roses on her head and the young man was smiling. The final shot consisted of the Starks seated in front of a fireplace: Grandfather and Grandmother were seated in the front and standing clockwise were Brandon, Ned, Lyanna, and Benjen. All of them had rather silly grins plastered on their faces, but the young woman seemed miserable. Was she thinking about that young man with the silver hair and violet eyes or did she hate family photographs? Arya couldn't tell.

When she returned all of the photos to their envelope, she kept one for herself. It showed her aunt in profile seated on a white fence, her eyes fixed on some distant point, her crossed one over the other, and her hands resting on her lap. The sun seemed to be setting and Arya thought she could detect a gust of wind in the waving grass at her feet. On the back the same someone who had addressed the envelope had written – _Lyanna. Last Photo. _

In the mirror before her, Arya saw that her profile was almost her aunt's. Almost. No wonder that Uncle Benjen sometimes commented within earshot that she looked just like her and that Catelyn was simply unable to look at her for long periods of time. Yet why did people hate her so much that they refused to mention her name? Was she that evil? Was she that stupid?

"Move your head to the right," Osha commanded.

Arya turned her head slightly and watched as long strands of her hair landed on the linoleum floor.

"What are you thinking about?" Ygritte asked her as the two of them walked along Westbury's main street later that afternoon.

"The past."

"Nothing good about the past. It's better to live in the present," the red-head opined.

"But haven't you ever been curious about your family's history?" Arya asked. "Where you come from? That sort of thing?"

"I don't really care about that stuff," the red-head shrugged. "My family has lived in this area since my great-great-grandfather came over from Ireland. That's all I was ever told. Why?"

"Never mind."

"Don't worry your head too much, okay?" the red-head suggested. "We should probably go back home before Gendry shows up."

They marched home in double time. They made themselves comfortable on the couch. Sam was watching _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2_ on his miniature television upstairs at full volume. It was his Saturday ritual. While other people played golf or watches Saturday morning cartoons, Sam would sit in his pajamas and watch the sage of the young wizard at Hogwarts over and over again. This was the first time in Arya's stay that he had managed to go through the complete saga, but it was the fifth for Ygritte and Jon and, by the annoyed look on Ygritte's rather ruddy face, it was taking its toll.

The red-head took a cigarette out of a secret drawer in the coffee table and lit it as the front door opened. Jon was wiping his boots against the floor. He hung his coat on one of the hangers, sat down on the couch next to Ygritte, placed his hand on her thigh, and leaned in for a kiss. Arya heard the light smacking sound and then another one that was slightly harder. She thought about moving away, but she heard a slight coughing noise to find that Jon's black Stark eyes were fixated on her

"I got my hair done today," Arya tossed it from one side to the other. "Do you like it, Jon?"

Jon blushed in embarrassment.

"Come on," Ygritte ribbed him with her elbow. "Tell her, she looks good."

"You look lovely," Jon spat quickly. "Where's Gendry?"

"I thought he was supposed to be here," Arya said looking at her watch. "You told him to come at four thirty, didn't you, Jon?"

"Yes."

The three of them sat for an interminable amount of time on the couch. Jon stuck his fingers in Ygritte's hair and began to twist. The red-head leaned on him and laid a kiss on his lips. This was followed by a second and then a third. By the time Arya retrieved her cell phone from her purse, he was kissing her neck and they were well on their way towards a home run. No wonder Ygritte was impatient, Arya thought as she stomped out to the front porch with her phone in her hand, she just wanted to jump him and kiss inch of his body.

The old wicker armchair was empty and Arya sat down on it. She dialed Gendry's number and waited. A light breeze played through her hair. In one of the neighbors' yards, she could see two children playing hide and go seek near some birch trees. "One hundred, ninety nine, ninety eight," one of the children counted as Gendry's phone rang interminable in Arya's ear. After the one hundredth ring, she hung up and dialed him again thinking that he was on another line talking to someone else. Once again the other line rang for what seemed like hours without anyone picking up on the other end. She called a third time and waited. Now, the kids had found and each other had traded places. The little girl, who had chased her brother around the front yard, was standing by the birch counting backwards from one hundred.

After she hung up once again, Arya leaned back in the chair and waited. She had never been very good at waiting. When the teacher at her elementary school would tell the girls to take out their silent reading books and read them for ten minutes, Arya would read one page, raise her hand, and ask if the time was up yet. The teacher always responded with a kindly look in her brown eyes. "No, Arya, you still have nine minutes to go" and, so, she would sit there for the next nine minutes trying to read, but completely unable to concentrate on the text before her. Her patience being tested to the point where she would just place her head on the desk and wait for the teacher to ring her bell. The bell that indicated that she didn't have to read anymore.

She waited in that cold winter evening with a pale blue sweater covering the black dress that Arianne had bought her two days before. With every car that passed by, she would look inside to see if there was a gangly young man behind the wheel. Yet all of those vehicles were filled with every body type imaginable except for the person that she was waiting for. He didn't telephone her either. She waited for two hours and then, finally, went inside with a defeated look on her face. "He's not coming," she announced to Jon and Ygritte who were lying right next to each other on the couch. "Not that either of you care, anyway."

She angrily stomped up the stairs and padded down the oriental rug. She made a sharp to the right and opened the door without knocking. Sam was sitting on the bed surrounded by a large mountain of tissues. She cleared off some of the tissues and sat down beside him. In the small bedroom, she noticed the books that were piled in small mountains everywhere. Some of them had ribbed leather bindings and gilded edges. There were some others that were contemporary paperbacks. There were also some jars that were placed haphazardly. In the darkness, she couldn't be entirely sure what they were.

She turned towards Sam. His eyes were red from crying, but there was a smile on his face. He made a motion for her to move closer to him, but she stayed where she was. She didn't want to have her dress ruined by his tears.

"What brings you up here?" Sam asked as he got up and poured her a glass of Pepsi.

"I got stood up," Arya's voice was hard and matter-of-fact.

"I'm sorry," Sam said as he handed her the cup. "Ron was rejected, too, you know."

"I know," Arya laughed as she took a long gulp.

"Do you want to talk to me about it?" He was lying on his stomach and had propped up his head one of his hands.

"Not much to tell," Arya shrugged. "He, Jon, Ygritte, and I were supposed to go to The Red Winery and he didn't show."

"That sucks," Sam shook his head. "Did you like him?"

"He was the best thing that ever happened to me."

"Not was," the Tarly corrected her gently. "Is."

"What?"

"He _is_ the best thing that ever happened to you."

"That makes no sense," Arya screwed up her face.

Sam got out of the bed and walked towards one of the bookshelves. Arya watched as he squatted down on his haunches next to one of the shelves. He was digging for something in his DVD collection. She watched as the boxes began to scatter everywhere. Some landed on the floor, while others crashed onto the bed. One of the cases even hit her on the knees with a resounding crash. Finally, he strolled towards her and handed her the holy grail of his endeavors. The cover showed Nicolas Cage's face on a smashed pot.

"I don't understand."

"When you have found your flower," Sam knocked against the plastic cover, "you can't let anything get in the way."

"What?"

"You like this guy, right?"

"Yeah," Arya nodded.

"And he likes you, right?"

"Yes."

"When you love something," he leaned back against the pillows, "you shouldn't give up on it. You should do everything in your power to keep that love alive. If you really love this guy, Arya, you shouldn't allow this to get in your way."

The words echoed in her head on the following Monday morning as she marched into Bear Island. Without even greeting the waitress, she placed her bag on the floor and sat down at her usual place. Gendry was there wiping the bar as usual. He marched over to her nonchalantly whistling some off color song that she had heard the Dothraki men singing from time to time. Something about two guitars and a man who got dumped for a gypsy.

As soon as he placed his hands on the bar, Arya pulled him close to her with one of her hands and snarled in his face. "You stood me up."

"I'm sorry," Gendry wrenched himself free and handed her a menu. "Something came up."

"You didn't call," Arya continued her abuse. "You didn't so much as text me."

"You're making a scene," Gendry whispered to her.

"I don't care!" Arya shouted. "You left me sitting on that porch waiting for you while Jon and Ygritte were macking in the living room and Sam was bawling his eyes out watching _Harry Potter_."

"I told you," he repeated. "Something came up."

"I don't care if something came up. You don't invite someone out on a date and not show up."

"It was important."

"I don't give a fuck how important it was," Arya cursed. "I got my hair done. I got a dress. I put makeup on my face."

"You bought a new dress?" Gendry's eyebrows rose in disbelief. "You hate dresses."

"I know," she wiped off a tear. "I did it for you."

"For me?"

"Yes, Gendry. For you. Is that so difficult for you to understand?"

"I liked you just the way you were. You didn't have to go out of your way."

"But I did. I wanted to. I asked a friend to buy it for me because my allowance hadn't come through yet."

"A friend?"

"Yes. A friend. Someone, unlike you, who doesn't speak in code every time she wants to convey a message."

Gendry winced. He poured her a beer from the tap and slid it towards her.

"I'm sorry," he said not even bothering to even look at her. "Something came up."

She didn't go back to Bear Island for days. Every afternoon after school, Arya went to Sunspear Imports where she and Arianne would sit on the second floor eating pomegranates together. She poured her heart out to the Arab woman. "I was so stupid," Arya berated herself. "I was so stupid. I bought a dress. I did my hair just like you told me to and he didn't come. Why did I have to agree to go out with him? Why?"

"I didn't say that it was going to be easy," Arianne smiled as she split one of the fruits in half. She gave half to Aryan and kept the rest for herself. "Did you honestly expect him not to stand you up on your first date?"

"Most guys don't," she sighed. "Most guys would come up, pick me up, and take me somewhere. Most guys would text me or call me or call my brother, but he didn't do anything like that. He just didn't come."

"There's other men in Westbury," Arianne shrugged. "Maybe, you could ask your brother to help you find another one."

Arya turned her away from Arianne and turned her gaze towards the first floor of Sunspear. She looked at the glazed fruits and Turkish delights on their golden platters, the hookahs standing against the walls, the lemons, oranges, and tangerines in their ornate bowls. All of it was beautiful. Too beautiful. At this moment, however, she did not feel like the woman who had stared at herself in that mirror days ago. She was broken, humiliated, and humbled.

Yet there was something inside her that kept pulling her towards Gendry. She was drawn to him by magnetism that she couldn't put into words. Every time she walked into Bear Island, she felt his presence so keenly that everybody else seemed to melt away. When he spoke to her, she only heard his voice. She knew that she was attracted to him, but what was it that she was attracted to? His exterior was nothing to write home about. He may have a handsome face, but is that enough to make a woman go hot and cold for him? Is that enough for a person like Gendry to engrave himself on the retina of her memory so that he became the only person that she ever thought about.

She looked over at Arianne who will was placing pomegranate seeds in her mouth. She placed them gingerly on her tongue without dropping them. She closed her lips ever so slowly and then, seemingly without chewing, swallowed the fruit. She did all of this in such a graceful way that Arya couldn't look away. She wasn't clumsy at all. If she was working at a bar like Gendry, she would pour everything slowly, measuring her ingredients precisely to the last drop, and counting the shaker as she moved it up and down in her hands.

She knew that grace like Arianne's was not something that a person learned. It was something that was inherited. Passed down through the bloodline for countless generations and polished like an expensive jewel. The Starks and the Tullys had their own elegance, of course, but it was nothing like Arianne's. It was a part of her culture. A notion that lurked within the very sands from which her ancestors had come.

It was then that Arianne remembered the story of Scheherezade. The sultan had killed off all of his wives after spending a night with them. Each one of them except for one and she had held his attention through her stories of brass cities, genies emerging from bottles found on the sea shore, and young men discovering unimaginable wealth in distant desert caves. There must be something, Arya thought, that she could do to keep Gendry as her friend. Something to keep his attention on her so that he would never stand her up again.

She thought about all of the ways that women tried to change themselves and to augment their appearance. There were breast implants, nose jobs, lips blown to proportions that would make Mick Jagger shudder. However, there could be subtler ways that didn't involve a physical transformation, but an interior one. One that could metamorphose a piece of starch and sugar into a Turkish delight or a rough hewn tomboy like Arya Stark into a lady.

"I won't give up on him," Arya's voice bespoke her resolution. "I can't."

"What are you going to do then?" Arianne asked as she leaned her head against her fist and smiled.

"I have to seduce him."

"Seduce him?" The woman's laughter echoed through the halls. "How on earth are you going to manage that?

"I don't know," Arya shrugged, "but I was thinking that you could teach me. I mean you told me to wear my hair differently and I did it. You told me to go with him if he asked me out. Maybe, I can make him even more interested in me."

"What do you want then?" The woman's interest grew with the pupils in her eyes.

"I want him to look at me and love me. I want him to never abandon me again."

"Perhaps," Arianne pressed a finger to her lips. "There is a way I can help you."

"Not just hair and makeup, please."

"No," the older woman shook her head. "No. This time it will be very different."

**XOXO**

Sansa was standing in the vestibule of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Synergy was hosting one of its annual parties and she was obligated to attend on behalf of her father. She always found the parties her father's company hosted to be lifeless affairs that lasted well into the early morning hours when most of the attendees were drunk. Young people were rarely invited and it was their parents and grandparents who made up most of the attendees. Of these each and every last one of them was either an employee of her father, one of his friends, or a colleague that he had invited to discuss important affairs.

The part of the party which Sansa always hated the most was the receiving line. Before Robb, Jon, and Arya left home, the four of them always stood next to Ned and Catelyn. They shook the hands of the editors, software engineers, magazine publishers, professional musicians, actors, actresses, businessmen, and politicians. Most of the time, the greetings were greetings and the guests moved on towards the hors d'oeuvres or a table where they could sit and chatter with their friends. If there was some conversation, it was always stiff and formal. Sometimes, someone complimented Sansa's hair or congratulated Jon and Robb on their joint acceptance at Yale. Those occasions, however, were extremely rare.

Tonight, Sansa stood next to Catelyn completely alone. She shook hands with all of the guests that came towards her. After half an hour of making pointless chit chat that never seemed to go anywhere, she asked her mother if she could be excused to wander around the portions of the museum that were open to the guests. Her mother gave her consent. "Do come back for dinner," she cautioned, "and remember, Sansa, no running!"

With the cold wind from the front doors whipping her back, she slowly walked up the marble staircase. As one of the world's premier attractions, this particular staircase had always been crowded during the day. Sometimes, Sansa had to jostle her way to get to her favorite gallery. Tonight, however, everything was completely calm and still. The only light beyond the reception area were beams of moonlight coming from a sky light high above Sansa's head.

The red-head walked further and further into the darkness of the museum's hallways. She passed Egyptian sarcophagi, Greek and Roman statuary, and modern American paintings. Every once in a while, she stopped and listened to the party taking place on the other side of the dark corridor: laughter, big band jazz, and the clinking of glasses. There was nothing here. Only an eternal silence that was silence interrupted by the clicking of her heels against the marble floors.

She made a right turn at the end of the hallway and passed a security who nodded her on. She was standing in an exhibition space. The walls were bare. Here and there, if she screwed up her eyes enough, she was able to make out tiny marks were nails had been placed and slightly larger holes above them for various paintings. In the center was a sleek Steinway piano and plastic chairs that had been arranged in a circle. Someone had given a performance here, Sansa thought, or they had given one when the exhibition finally closed.

With hesitant steps, she walked towards the grand piano and sat down on the stool without a second thought. She lifted the black lid and swept her hang over the keys without depressing them. Except for the security guard who was standing at the entrance, there was no one else to hear her playing. She played the first four notes of a C major scale before she stopped herself. Could she get in trouble? Would she be escorted out by security?

She made a signal to the guard. His tread was heavy on the marble floor. His face was round and unsmiling with a flattened nose.

"Do you mind if I play something?" Sansa asked.

"You can do whatever you want," the guard shrugged and walked away.

She made a slight adjustment to the stool, raising it so that her long legs were flat against the floor. She closed her eyes and placed her hands on the piano's shiny keys.

No musician is ever able to describe that moment when the first note sounds and they become absorbed in the piece before them. It is a moment when they enter into a communion with another being that might no longer be alive. The music in their hands or voices becomes something much more than their feeble instruments can ever make it. It is a conduit that floats through them and then out into the audience. For five minutes, half an hour, or five hours, the music they create envelops the auditorium to such an extent that they may not even be aware of the powerful emotions that their performances are eliciting from the audience.

The only thing that a musician is aware of in that sublime moment of performance is of the music itself. It may be beautiful or ugly, tonal or atonal. Yet for those few moments, it lives inside of them. For that short amount of time that he or she is on the stage, the musician becomes a physical embodiment of the piece that he or she is playing. He swings back and forth on the stool in circular motion, he grunts, he pants. Sometimes, there are nonsensical noises that come out of his mouth. Yet that is what music always has a tendency to do. It possesses the performer and doesn't let him go until the final note has sounded and only then is the musician brought down to earth and, once more, becomes a mortal man living among other mortals.

Sansa played the Sixth Nocturne by Faure that night. It was a piece that she had learned last year. It was not as notoriously difficult as the Liszt rhapsody, but it had its own idisyncracies. Composed in the key of D flat major, Sansa's hands were forced to concentrate almost exclusive on the black keys of the piano. Not only this, but they were forced to jump from the highest keys to the lowest in a matter of ten minutes. Adding to this the minutest dynamics and a melody that sounded as if it came from a song and the challenge was tremendously difficult.

In the darkened hall, however, Sansa Stark rose to it with all of her might. Although she played for herself, she imagined that there were other people seated around her on those plastic chairs. The music sighed, it wept, it sang underneath her fingers. When the climactic section arrived and the piano was turned into a harp, she felt that her rib cage would burst from the beating of her heart. So invested was she that the music left her completely exhausted the moment it ended and she closed the lid.

She recovered herself quickly and turned around. In the shadows was a figure. Whether it was male or female, she could not make out immediately. However, it was leaning against one of the white walls and looking up into the sky high above its head completely absorbed in its own thoughts or daydreams.

Thinking that the figure had come to hear her play, she opened up the piano again. She launched into one of the great Hungarian Dances by Brahms. As soon as she had finished the first iteration of the long, melancholy melody and launched herself into the allegro, she watched as the figure slowly approached the piano with a steady tread. It loomed larger and larger until it was standing right next to her right hand. A male figure, she thought. A vaguely familiar figure, but she could not place him for the life of her.

She gave the little miniature all of the fire that she could muster. She was not as exhausted as she had been by the Faure, but she still needed to catch her breath when the music ended.

"You played very well," the mysterious stranger said.

It was Joffrey's companion from the Starbucks. The one he referred to as Dog.

"Thank you," Sansa blushed.

"Are you Hungarian?" The tall dark haired stranger asked.

"No. Are you?"

The figure nodded silently.

"Why does Joffrey call you Dog?"

"I'll tell you some other time."

He walked out of the gallery before she could speak another word.

She slammed down the piano's lid and followed his distant footsteps wherever they led. As she entered the lobby, however, she lost him completely. He had gone back into the night from which he had come.

"Did we invite any Baratheons tonight?" Sansa asked as she sat down next to her mother at one of the tables later that evening.

"Robert was here. Why?" Ned cocked an eyebrow.

"Never mind," the red-head brushed the thought away. "I just thought…"

"You'll see the children some other time," Ned assured her sweetly. "Maybe, sooner than you think."

"Why is that?" Sansa queried.

"He's my business partner," Ned explained. "We'll have a party at Synergy next Thursday."

* * *

_AN: _Thank you to everyone who has alerted and favorited the story so far. I would really appreciate any feedback that you can give me via review. If you want to talk, you can visit me on tumblr (breakfast-at-kings-landing). Thanks again for your support and expect the next chapter soon!


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